Melania Trumpʼs bronze statue stolen in her homeland

A bronze statue dedicated to the US First Lady Melania Trump has disappeared in Slovenia — police have launched an investigation.

AFP writes about this.

This life-size bronze statue of the US First Lady was installed near her hometown of Sevnica in 2020. It was placed on a stump in the middle of a field after the previous wooden sculpture was set on fire.

According to the police and the author of the bronze version, American conceptual artist Brad Downey, the statue was sawed off at the ankles and removed.

"The theft was reported on May 13, the police immediately went to the scene and began an investigation," police spokeswoman Alenka Drenik Rangus told AFP.

Downey said he learned about the incident while preparing a new project in Germany, and admitted he was "a little sad that sheʼs gone".

The artist noted that when the first statue was burned, it “felt wrong”, so he decided to replace it with a bronze copy, which he called “an anti-monument, an anti-propaganda.”

The first wooden sculpture — in a blue dress and heels — was carved from a tree trunk by local craftsman Ales Zhupevets with a chainsaw.

The bronze version was installed at the end of Donald Trumpʼs first term, when he was running for re-election. It was secured with concrete and metal rods in a private field near Sevnica.

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